Editor's Note: For those of a certain age, the story of Christopher Columbus and his conquest of the "New World" was a largely unchallenged aspect of our Euro-centric education system. Here, Molly Bullock shares the story of Blue Haase, a Cherokee teenager who took matters into his own hands and confronted local officials about replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous People's Day. This piece originally appeared in the Summer 2016 issue of This Land.
Last September in the town of Bartlesville, 15-year-old Blue Haase got a ride to his local school board meeting. During the time for public comments, Blue, an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, took the mic and identified himself as a student representative of Operation Eagle, Bartlesville Public Schools’ district-funded Native education program. Reading from notes he had prepared, Blue asked why the district was still recognizing a holiday that honors Christopher Columbus, the Italian explorer whose colonization efforts included unspeakable atrocities. He asked the board to undertake a district-wide adoption of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a celebration of Native culture and contributions.
When the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise ran a story about Blue’s remarks, a backlash followed. Blue had attended the meeting on a whim and hadn’t cleared his statement with Operation Eagle. His words were received as a blow to the district, which has been working closely with Operation Eagle for decades to support Native kids. To complicate matters, his mother, Jessie Haase, is president of parent committees for the program.
“The district doesn’t want to look bad,” Jessie said. “And Blue didn’t hold back.”
Jessie ran interference, fielding calls and comments from supportive school board members as well as those complaining that Blue had been excessively negative.
“I’m like, OK, well, you are not a 15-year-old Native American boy, so I don’t expect you to understand that negativity,” Jessie said. “You’ve never had people want to know what will happen if they cut your hair off. You’ve never had people for five or six years of your life call you a little Indian girl. You’ve never been on a field trip to the museum, where they talk about everything in a historical context—like moccasins and roaches and buckskin dresses that you take the kids to see at the museum—we have that in our house.”
The dust settled with the agreement that in the future, Blue would distinguish his own views from those of Operation Eagle. Meanwhile, the Examiner-Enterprise story had gone viral among Bartlesville High School students, many of whom began confronting Blue in class. When he got home from school, he armed himself with new facts to inform whatever debate he might find himself in the next day.